An extraordinary memento of the creative presence of the artistic super-couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera - ‘equals and accomplices’ as they were described - in the mid-western city of Detroit, early in 1933.
With these drawings into a young woman’s autograph album, made a few days before their departure for New York, Kahlo and Rivera marked the close of a period of great artistic achievement for them both. Three days before these drawings were created Rivera finished his industrial frescoes and Kahlo ended her anguished sequence of Detroit canvases. In her drawing and inscription Kahlo has overtly recognised this transitional moment. Her miniature figure of a holds out flowers (’I paint flowers so they will not die’ - Kahlo) and in her inscription she looks forward to moving to New York. Kahlo emphasises her Mexican identity by calling herself the ‘Princess of Tenoxtitlan’ (sic) and signing herself ‘Carmen Rivera’ as she did on her Detroit paintings. To the album Rivera contributes two remarkable drawings: a mask-wearing man who resembles closely his masked automotive engineers on the north wall of what is now Rivera Court at the Detroit Art Institute. In his second figure Rivera depicts a serene, upwards-gazing African-American man viewed in profile with his work mask pushed nto his forehead.
Together Kahlo and Rivera spent much of 1932 and early 1933 in Detroit where Rivera had been commissioned to create a series of frescoes for the Detroit Art Institute which would draw upon the city’s industrial heritage. It is generally acknowledged that while in the city both artists hit ‘a career peak’ as Rivera completed his DIA mural and Kahlo worked intensely on a series of portraits dealing with her personal struggles. Rivera remembered how: ‘Frieda began work on a series of masterpieces which had no precedent in the history of art... Never before had a woman put such agonized poetry on canvas as Frida did at this time in Detroit.’ Whilst they lived in the city the couple were feted and entertained by Detroit’s elite. Kahlo in particular responded provocatively to her American hosts: ‘the expansive Rivera speaking Spanish and French and demanding all the attention, with the petite and caustic Kahlo dressed in colorful Mexican costumes... At Henry Ford’s sister’s home, Frida talked on about the wonders of communism. At a dinner at Henry Ford’s she asked the anti-semitic industrialist if he was Jewish.’ One of the other elite Detroit households who entertained Kahlo and Rivera was the Cohen family, parents of Evelyn Cohen who, on the evening of March 13, 1933, persuaded Kahlo and Rivera to inscribe her little album. This album captures a pivotal moment in art history.
PROVENANCE: Evelyn Cohen and by descent.
EVELYN COHEN’S ALBUM: Padded black roan (15x11.5cm), maker’s stamp of ‘Horn Est 1846, [ff] 48, alternating pink, yellow, blue leaves, c 60 entries - the entries do not follow chronological order but range over the years from 1922-1934 including, school teachers, friends, musicians, written in English and sometimes in Hebrew.
Kahlo’s miniature of a woman with flowers is balanced by her thoughtful inscription written in faulty English: ‘March 16. 1933 To Eveline, three days before going to New York, with the love of from [sic] the Princess of Tenoxtitlan Carmen Rivera’. Below this Kahlo has placed her tiny figure of a woman holding a bunch of flowers away from her body and a huge swirling pen line that connects the woman with her signature and inscription above.
Using blue ink Rivera has made two drawings: the first depicts a man wearing a gas mask and goggles, very similar to the masked figure he muralled on the automotive north wall of what is now Rivera Court at the Detroit Art Institute and wrote below: ‘D.R. To beautiful Eveline’. On the adjacent leaf Rivera has sketched an African-American man in profile, apparently wearing goggles which have been pushed up onto his forehead and inscribed ‘Diego Rivera Detroit March 16 1933’.
At least one other Spanish speaker was present on the March 16, signing themself something like ‘Y Ay’ and, from their inscription, seemingly a creative figure as well: ‘A los angeles del cielo les boy a mandar pedirima pluma de sus alaso para podente escribir March 16 1933’ - ‘I send to the angels in heaven to ask for a pen from their wings so that I can write’.
